LeBron James: King James Foolishly Puts Extreme Pressure on 2012 Olympic Squad

LeBron James has made a big mistake.

The Miami Heat star just set the expectations for the 2012 Olympic team to a ridiculously high level.

He dropped a Dream Team reference:

"

We can stack up with those guys. They set the standard for USA Basketball in '92 with all the great players they had. But we have some great ones, as well. We have some Hall of Famers, some champions. So it's going to be a great (team).

"

Did you not learn anything from QB Vince Young of the Philadelphia Eagles, LeBron?

The 1992 Dream Team was the best team ever assembled. They had the best player of all-time in Michael Jordan, along with Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird and Patrick Ewing.

Wow. That’s 11 Hall of Famers. They outscored opponents by an average of 43.8 points per game. You can’t “stack up” to that, LeBron.  

There hasn’t been anything close to that sort of dominance since and I don’t think the 2012 team compares in terms of talent.

Sure, James is going to have plenty of weapons around him (Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant and Derrick Rose), but it doesn’t compare to 1992. No team was as perfectly balanced with player’s that weren’t concerned with their stats. There are a lot more egos to deal with this time around (cough…Kobe…cough) and young guys that have no idea what to expect.

This team is going to be much more inexperienced and as used to the odd rules of the Olympics. Now they are going to be dealing with all of the hype that comes with trying to match the best run a basketball team has ever made.

No pressure.

The 2008 squad was very deep and ended up outscoring foes by 28.9 points a game, but they had all they could handle against Spain in the championship. They won by 11, but the game was tight throughout. This year Spain is going to have a more mature Ricky Rubio and the team overall has improved just like the US, which brings up my last point.

The competition has gotten 100 times better internationally in the last 20 years and there aren’t going to be many cakewalks in the field. This team can’t take any games off. The margin for error is not as big as LeBron thinks it is.

Now he will be reminded of his words over and over again for the next eight months leading up to the Olympics.

Don’t worry about the Dream Team…worry about Spain.